Historical Marker Program

Chouteau’s Post

Mayes County
Location: on public school grounds in Salina
Topics: American Indians; Indian and Frontier Trade; Military; Settlement Patterns; Westward Expansion, 1803–1861

Auguste Chouteau and his brother, Pierre, traded with the Arkansas band of Osage in the Three Forks area where the Arkansas, Verdigris, and Grand Rivers merge. Colonel A. P. Chouteau—Pierre's son and the fourteenth man to graduate from the US Military Academy at West Point— built a trading post on the Grand River in 1817, recognized as the oldest permanent American settlement in what became Oklahoma. He built a home near the trading post on the eastern bank of the Grand River.